


Only When You Sleep

by ninemoons42



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Community: kink_bingo, Dysfunctional Family, M/M, Nightmares, Road Trips, Sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-15
Updated: 2011-06-15
Packaged: 2017-10-20 11:04:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/212098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42





	Only When You Sleep

  
title: Only When You Sleep  
author: [](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**ninemoons42**](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/)  
word count: 608  
fandom: X-Men: First Class [movieverse]  
pairing: hinted-at Charles Xavier/Erik Lehnsherr  
rating: PG  
notes: Inspired by [this lovely fanart](http://timbitsu.livejournal.com/20045.html) by [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/timbitsu/profile)[**timbitsu**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/timbitsu/). Hints of Xavier's backstory from the comics.  
Written for [](http://kink-bingo.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**kink_bingo**](http://kink-bingo.dreamwidth.org/). Kink: sleepy/unconscious. My card is [here](http://ilovetakahana.livejournal.com/111469.html).

  
It's all metal, some kind of dead weight that shouldn't actually be flying through the sky, and it's keeping Erik awake. The rivets vibrating over the outside skin of the airplane, instruments and control surfaces groaning softly as the air pressure and the temperatures change. He's acutely sensitive to it, now, and it's bothering him, and there's no one to talk to.

A quiet shudder of breath next to him, a fine tremor shaking through the metal buried beneath the upholstery.

Charles is sleeping. Not restfully, it seems. His eyebrows are pulled together into a straight line. Deep creases at the corners of his eyes. The strange, strong grip he has on the armrests, his knuckles bone-white through his skin.

Erik doesn't need to be a telepath to know what's bothering him; the seat tells him all he needs to know.

And he's getting angry, quietly, because he doesn't know how to help. If the help will even be welcome.

Charles is so good at keeping his secrets. His missing father. The stepbrother who had bullied and abandoned him. His mother, quietly fading away under a medicated stupor.

Erik only knows this because he had happened to overhear an urgent, whispered conversation between Moira and Raven.

Charles hates the mansion, avoids several rooms in it. His stepbrother's room, still intact; the faintly medicinal smell of his mother's sickroom. The music room, which he'd sighed and left to the children with a small wave of his hand.

A sigh brings Erik back to the present.

It looks like Charles is trying his damnedest best to curl up into a ball. He is being thwarted by the airplane seat. The blanket is rucked up around his shoulders; there's a flash of bared skin from where his cuff is riding up his arm.

If Erik listens very closely - and it's a simple enough matter to shut out all the sounds of the metal around them - he can just about make out the agitated keening coming from Charles's lips.

And that's the thing about a telepath, right? Especially a telepath like Charles. He heals, he makes the monsters under the bed go away, he can even banish the worst of the bad memories - but he can only do that for others. He can't do that for himself.

Erik stares at him in consternation for a long moment. It might be a mercy to wake him up, to get him out of his own head, and he reaches out for Charles, plants a heavy hand on his shoulder.

Instantly Charles goes quiet. He seems to settle down and straighten out in his seat. A deep breath, a clean breath, and the lines in his face smoothing themselves away.

It can't be that easy.

Erik watches, transfixed, as Charles rearranges himself. At the end of it he's stretched out easily in the narrow airplane seat, his hands crossed primly in his lap. Deep, even breaths. His head has landed on Erik's shoulder.

Erik suddenly and silently curses the armrest between them.

Charles's blanket has fallen to the floor. There's a metal button in it, and Erik uses that to lift it back to his hands, throws it over Charles's lap.

Charles sighs and leans closer.

Erik allows himself a fond smile. There is no one else here in the cabin, after all, and Charles is certainly never going to know. Daringly he turns and places a kiss on the other man's forehead.

Charles sighs again, and his lips part in the slightest of smiles.

Erik finds himself falling asleep to a faint _Thank you_ , somewhere in the back of his mind.  



End file.
